


If You Want to Stay (Just Stay)

by silverfoxflower



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Falling In Love, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, Romantic Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 12:20:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29966277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverfoxflower/pseuds/silverfoxflower
Summary: Eskel was no handyman. He could have left at any time, but.He’d done more, for less. Here was warm food and a bed, a roof over his head. Gentle company when he wanted it, though her smiles made his head spin and she still twitched away whenever their hands accidentally brushed.It was better that she did that, really. So that he didn’t … misunderstand. Act on his impulses and make her disgusted, or worse, scared.
Relationships: Eskel/Triss Merigold
Comments: 5
Kudos: 39





	If You Want to Stay (Just Stay)

**Author's Note:**

> Started shipping these two because of literally two sentences in Blood of Elves, and I regret NOTHING.

“What do we have here?” a voice sweet as birdsong, the spill of chestnut hair over a sun-gold shoulder.

Surely, Eskel thought dimly, he had stumbled upon a faerie glen, and would bleed out here among the spring grasses and bobbing swallowtail. It wasn’t an unpleasant way to go, all things considering. 

Especially with such an ethereal creature bending over him, making noises of concern as he desecrated her glen with his gore-splattered armor and dribbling wounds, more potion then blood running through his veins, now. 

He almost thought he could feel her cool hand on his forehead before the spinning darkness took him.

–

Her name was Triss, and she kept her tower at the edge of the forest. 

Eskel, who had learned from the first to be ever mistrustful of sorceresses, found himself rather torn now that he was in the debt of one. 

“What were you hunting?” She asked, legs swinging as she perched at his bedside. 

“Grave hag,” he said, and sipped at his soup, watching her warily over the brim of his bowl. 

The room she kept him in was small. Too small for a man and a woman to sit alone without Eskel … thinking things. Unobtainable things, about the slim grace of her wrists and the warm curve of her smile. He looked away before he reached dangerous territory, rubbing fitfully at his scar.

“Hm,” Triss said with light humor, “are Witchers all alike, then? So taciturn, with nary a bone to spare for conversation?” 

Eskel didn’t know the other Witchers she had met, but he found himself tongue-tied in her presence. “I’ll apologize, then,” he said, sighing softly. “You saved my life. I can owe you conversation, at least.” 

Triss laughed, which also another point in her favor. They were stacking up rapidly, Eskel thought, like an unwieldy tower. Soon it would all come collapsing down. 

“You stay here alone, then?” he asked quickly, “I rather thought mages … stuck to royal courts and the like.” 

Triss would belong there, he thought, among the glittering beauties of the realm. A shining knight on her arm, to cater to her every whim. 

“I go where I am called, when they have need of me,” Triss said, looking down at her fingers as she plucked at the edge of Eskel’s blanket. “But I find, of late, that I prefer to pass my time here. Enjoying the rare peace allowed to me.” 

“Isn’t it lonely?” Eskel asked, which was, perhaps, rude. He, himself, had no great patience for court politics, had knew well enough the tedium of their machinations. But Triss was not made of the same stuff as he, who walked the bone-deep solitude of the Path as his birthright. 

“A little,” she admitted, then slid him a small, clever smile. “Which is why I have need of some sweet conversation. Even if it is produced with great reluctance.” 

Eskel smiled ruefully at that, finishing his soup and handing her the empty bowl. When their fingers brushed, Triss yanked her hand away with a look of surprise. 

Eskel felt his heart stutter and sink. It was to be expected, after all. He glanced away, rubbing the edge of his fingernail against his scar. 

“I apologize I cannot be more scintillating company today,” he said stiffly, “I would like to rest.” 

–

Witcher mutagens being what they were, Eskel was healed enough to leave the next morrow. 

He found Triss in her workshop, surrounded by strings of dried herbs, flowers on bobbing vines catching on her hair and her clothes as she swept past. 

“Oh,” Triss said, her mouth opening in faint surprise when he announced his intentions. “So soon?” 

“That’s kind of you to say, but I’m sure you’ll be happy to have me out of your hair,” Eskel smiled, glancing at the flower petal that had fallen upon her shoulder. His fingers twitched to brush it off. 

“But,” Triss said. “I have need of you.” 

Eskel blinked, and looked at her.

“I saved you for a reason, of course,” Triss said. Her expression betrayed nothing, but she was fitfully twisting the ring around her littlest finger. “I need you to … do something for me.” 

“I see,” Eskel said. She was a sorceress, after all, with a mage’s machinations. It actually gave him a measure of ease, now that he knew the balance of the relationship between them. “What do you need?” 

“Arachasae venom,” she said, after a moment of silence. “There’s an enclave just south of here.” 

“Very well,” Eskel said, and turned to leave. Triss reached out to grab his arm, but her hand paused, hovering just above his elbow. 

“I’m coming with you,” she said.

“Why?” he asked, genuinely confused, when she could not even stand to touch him, in the most casual of ways. 

“To make sure you’re doing it correctly,” she said archly. “Arachasae venom must be collected in a very particular manner.” 

“Ah,” Eskel said, a little unhappily. It wasn’t that he feared she would be an impediment, as with her magic she could surely fend for herself. She was, however, a certain distraction. 

No matter. It would be over soon.

–

Triss was a fine companion as they rode south, though given to passionate diatribes about politics. She seemed to take Eskel’s neutral responses as a challenge and began to pose moral riddles to him which … well, in the end he did not mind them so much, as for all her moral grandstanding, Triss had an amusingly slippery sense of right and wrong, and often as not talked herself out of the very position she was defending. 

Mostly, he just enjoyed hearing her talk. Her eyes sparkled when she grew passionate, her spine stiffened, and she made quite the beautiful shape on her mount. 

“I feel as if you are judging me, when you stare so and do not speak,” she said, though with a tone that was more good-natured than accusatory. 

Eskel shrugged. “If it makes you uncomfortable I will stop. You are simply the most interesting thing to look at around here.” This was plainly true, for they were riding through near-endless fields of wheat. 

For some reason, the answer made Triss bashful. She smoothed a strand of hair behind her ear and was silent for the rest of the ride. 

–

There were no Arachasae in the South. 

“I suppose I must have heard wrong,” Triss said with dismay, once again twisting the ring on her finger. 

“Do you need the venom very badly?” Eskel asked tentatively, “I could travel further to seek it, perhaps … return?” 

Perhaps too forward, to imagine Triss rising to welcome him with a warm, surprised smile, like a sweetheart who’s soldier had returned from war. 

“No, no,” Triss said irritably, crumbling his foolish fantasy. “I have … there are other things I’ll have you do.” So said, she slid onto her mount and spurred it away, leaving Eskel little choice but to follow.

–

Another night in the tower, and the next morning, Triss surprised him by appearing in plain clothing - a roughspun dress and apron with her hair tied at her nape. 

“Today,” she announced triumphantly, “we shall install raised beds for the herbs.” 

“I … very well,” Eskel said, baffled. He had been expecting another errand to collect potion ingredients, but he had no opposition to labor, if that is what Triss wished to use him for.

They worked together under the sun, and Eskel found that sorceresses did, indeed, sweat. Though still prettily, he thought ruefully, watching Triss wipe her brow, then her chin on her handkerchief.

Triss seemed to be very intent on watching him as he transferred the sprouted valerian to the bed, cradling the fragile roots in his palm, the dark soil dusting between his fingers. 

“Am I doing it wrong?” he asked. 

“No,” she said, darting away her gaze. “You’re … very gentle.” 

She stood and he continued working, startling when he felt a cold flask pressed to the back of his neck. 

Triss laughed. “It’s water,” she said. 

Eskel took it and drank gratefully, wondering at how she had surprised him. He was aware of her presence, of course. Always. But she had managed to sneak up on him nonetheless. 

“I can teach you the trick, if you’d like,” Triss said, lowering herself to the ground beside him. She smoothed a piece of hair behind her ear. “You have … great magical potential. Much more than any other Witcher I’ve met.” 

Eskel felt a muddled sort of jealousy at the thought of Triss with other Witchers, but that was to be expected, of course. She was a whole being with a sweeping history, more than just the healer within the tower, more than just what Eskel knew of her. 

“Think on it,” Triss said, a little flushed as she busied herself with her yarrow. “There’s much I can do- … much I can teach you. You need only to ask.”

–

He still wasn’t altogether certain that this wasn’t a faerie circle, after all.

In a blink, Eskel found that he had spent one week, and then two in the tower, as long as he had spent in one place anywhere save the winter keep. Each day, he awoke and mentally prepared himself to return to the Path, the solitude and the struggle, which he’d never minded as deeply as he did before he had gotten a taste of this … golden interlude. 

But each morning, Triss would greet him with breakfast and tea and a new task. 

The muntins on the western windows had been shredded by the last storm that blew through. The weathervane was crooked. The door of the cellar was bent half off of its hinges and scraped against the ground when it opened (funny, it had been just fine a few days ago …)

Eskel was no handyman. He could have left at any time, but. 

He’d done more, for less. Here was warm food and a bed, a roof over his head. Gentle company when he wanted it, though her smiles made his head spin and she still twitched away whenever their hands accidentally brushed.

It was better that she did that, really. So that he didn’t … misunderstand. Act on his impulses and make her disgusted, or worse, scared. 

The days grew longer as spring heightened into a warm, sweet summer. They began to spend their nights outside, spreading a blanket under the large, willow at the top of the slope, a companionable silence between them as they watched the slow slide of the sun over the horizon. 

In the golden hours before dusk, they drank their way through Triss’s store of honey-mead and huckleberry wine, and Eskel taught her to play gwent. 

She was terrible at it, but stubbornly persistent to continue nonetheless, reminding Eskel, ruefully, of when Lambert had first taken to the game. It wasn’t that she had trouble remembering the rules, nor did she have a lack of stratagems which impressed even Eskel’s jaded eye. 

No, it was that Triss had _tells_. 

It was a wonder that she lasted as long in court as she did, with how badly she lied. Or perhaps those around her simply hadn’t the opportunity to observe her as Eskel had. It seemed that every moment of time they spent together, his eye was drawn to her, and he has learned the nuance of her expressions - the soft twitch of amusement in the corner of her lip when she was delighted but knew she should be serious, the bitten lip and furrowed brow when she was distressed and wished to hide it. 

The way she twisted her ring about her finger when she was lying.

Eskel felt the sharpness of the realization like an arrow through his chest. 

“The Arachasae in the south …” he said, “there never were any. You knew there never were any.” 

“Oh you just figured that out, did you?” Triss said, lowering her cards to the ground. She was trying to sound unconcerned, but the trembling in her fingers gave her away.

“Why?” he asked, more harshly than he felt. Mostly he was just … confused. If she wanted him to stay around, she could have just asked. Though it seemed like she had little need for a Witcher …

“You’ll shame me if you make me say it aloud,” Triss put her hands over her face and groaned. “I just … I was _waiting_ -” she peeked at him from between her fingers, and if she were not vexing him at that moment, Eskel would have thought it was endearing, the childish sullenness she displayed. “I thought you wanted me.” She finished with a low sigh. “I … I might be wrong.” 

“You are not,” Eskel said, still deeply perplexed. “But I don’t understand … when you cannot even stand to touch me …” 

“Ah,” Triss colored, drawing her hands to her lap. “It’s your magical aura. Too … strong.” At the lack of comprehension on his face, her eyes widened. “Oh you thought … no, it’s … it’s quite the opposite.” She raised her hand and hesitantly placed her fingers on his wrist, giving him time to pull away. 

Her touch was as light as that of a butterfly alighting on a bobbing flower, and yet. 

The flush on her face stained down to her chest. 

“You see,” she said, biting her lip. “You have made me say it. And I am shamed.” She took her hand away, but this time he captured it before it could flee, and brought it to his mouth. 

Her pulse beat rabbit-fast under his lips.

–

He spread her hair upon the blanket, kissed her neck and her breasts and tasted the sweetness between her thighs as she arched against him, sobbing. He held her on his lap as she took him inside her, so wet, so tight that he had to press his forehead against her collarbone and recite all the major phylogeny of lower-order vampires to last. And still, as her hips began to twitch and she began to make these low, needy noises in her throat …

“You feel so good,” she whispered in the small space between them, and clung to him, her skin shivering against his own. Eskel had never bedded someone who had taken to him so hungrily, not even succubi literally starving for their next meal. It fed into his own greedy need, shredded his control, even as it made him tender towards her, mouthing adoringly at the line of her neck, the graceful sweep of her shoulder. He would worship every part of her if he could, but they were so desperate for it that they could only rock against each other sweetly, clumsily, filling the glen with their pleasured cries. 

–

In the morning, of course, there was no question that he had to leave. 

For the last time, Eskel gathered his armor (which felt tight and stiff over the bit of softness he’d gained, in this comfortable time), his equipment, and his herbs (bolstered by what Triss had packed away for him). 

He went downstairs and thought that perhaps Triss would not be there, but she was, twisting her fingers in her skirt, the sun in the window behind her giving her a soft, ethereal shape. A faerie creature, as he had thought in the first. A fleeting, heartbreaking love. 

Would she ask him to stay? Would he have the strength to say no?

In the end, she said nothing, and Eskel turned to go, feeling, with each step, that he was leaving his heart behind.

“Wait!” Triss called suddenly, and this time she did touch him, run up to grab him firm by the arm. 

They stood at the doorway and looked at each other. Triss’s hair was aglow in the sunlight, her freckles golden on her soft, brown face. Eskel wanted to kiss her so badly he shook with it, under his armor. 

“I’m coming with you, of course,” Triss said, and it felt inevitable for him to pull her close, to press her into the doorway and kiss her sun-warm lips as she threw her arms over his shoulders. 

“Why?” he asked huskily, _why, when you could have anyone? Why me?_

Her fingers were gentle as they stroked over the scars on his cheek, her expression soft. “Because I have need of you,” she said, flicking her brilliant eyes up to meet his. “Because … I have want of you.” 

“Very well,” Eskel smiled, and kissed her again. 

**Author's Note:**

> my [tumblr](https://greyduckgreygoose.tumblr.com/tagged/myfic)


End file.
